.”
Eva slipped her arm through Marc’s and tugged. “Let’s go find that Italian beef you love so much.”
“Right.” He thanked the woman for the sample and let Eva lead him away. “Thanks for the assist.”
“No problem.” It took her a moment to realize she still grasped Marc’s arm. The warmth of his body close to hers comforted her.
Alarmed, she released her hold, and they continued shopping and chatting. After they’d gathered an assortment of cherries and peaches, Gouda cheese, and bread, they left the market and walked in the direction of a small park.
Marc sat under a large London plane tree, a cross between a sycamore and an oriental plane tree. The shade offered a welcome respite from the increasing heat of the day.
Eva lowered herself beside him and leaned against the tree’s white-and-gray trunk. “That was fun.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a few peaches, tossing one to Marc.
He settled into the trunk space beside her, their shoulders skimming each other. “I usually go by myself, so I’m in and out in twenty minutes. I tend to stick to the same few booths. But I noticed a lot more when I was with you.”
Eva’s fingers rotated the peach in her hand, stroking the fuzzy exterior. “That’s how it was when I was with him.” Her voice grew quiet. An intense longing flared inside her.
She took a bite of her peach. The juice filled every crevice of her mouth, the sweet flesh making her feel alive, even if just for a few moments.
Exhaling, she finally brought up the reason she’d asked him to meet. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
He polished off the rest of his peach and set the pit on the ground between them. “Okay, shoot.”
She removed her steel water bottle from her purse. “Yesterday I got a phone call from a woman in England about some race Brent signed up for in New Zealand. She said you and Wes were his teammates. I was a little thrown off at first and didn’t ask many questions.” She took a sip of water. “So it’s what? A marathon? A really expensive one?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s an ultra-marathon, actually. One hundred fifty-five miles across New Zealand. Runners have to complete the race in increments over seven days. You can walk it, but of course Brent wanted to run the whole thing. We signed up a week before . . .”
“Why didn’t he mention it to me?”
Marc’s right thumb massaged circles into his left palm. “He was going to surprise you. Said you guys wanted to do New Zealand together, and he was going to make plans to stay for a few weeks afterward to sightsee.”
That man . . . always full of surprises.
Eva rallied her spirits before she could sink into the emotion threatening to topple her. “It seems like a shame to let the spots go to waste. Why don’t you still run it?”
“We signed up as a team because all the individual spots were taken. It’s a miracle we even snagged a team spot. This marathon fills up years in advance, and it’s only in New Zealand every twenty years. But we decided we’d rather do it as a team anyway. We’d have to rely on each other to make it through, to run faster, to be better.” Marc coughed. “I have no desire to run it on my own.”
Eva leaned closer to him. “I get that.”
“I miss him every day.”
“Me too.”
“I was supposed to be with them that day.” He punched his palm. “If I hadn’t gotten that stomach bug . . .”
Eva reached for his hands to still them. “I know what you’re thinking. But you might have ended up down there without enough oxygen too.”
He stared at her hands on top of his, a far-off look in his eyes. “If I’d been there, I could have gone for help when Wes got his foot stuck in that rotten board. It might have made a difference.”
From what authorities told the family afterward, in addition to exerting all his energy trying to free his brother from the collapsed ruins of the underwater shipwreck, Brent had likely succumbed to nitrogen narcosis, which could lead to dizziness, anxiety, and unconsciousness.
“We don’t know that. You can’t dwell on the what-ifs.”
“And yet I do . . . all the time.”
“I know. Me too.”
Marc was quiet for a moment. “I think I held him back. In the business, I mean. He was such